This is unbetaed, etc. so let me know if there is anything glaring. The rating will be going up later. THIS IS A WIP - I have no schedule for updates, but I'm going to try and get them up within a week or so of each other. However, it's not written yet, so you'll have to be patient with me.
It's mainly a whole bunch of angst with a bit of fluff here and there. If you have any triggers regarding mental health issues, minor mentions of suicide contemplation, minor mentions of physical and emotional torture or any general concerns about your triggers and the content just drop me a line and we can discuss. It's not half as dark as this warning makes it sound, but I just like to be careful!
Sherlock knows John would do anything for him. Sometimes he allows the realisation to warm him, to send that indefinable thrill skittering down his spine, leaving the familiar tingling burn in its wake. Sometimes it scares him.
Sometimes, when Sherlock is sitting and staring at nothing, he's not actually. Not nothing. John assumes his eyes are sightless, looking inward. Sometimes they are. But occasionally he just lets John think they are, so he can sit and stare at something. So he can watch uninterrupted, observe and relearn the rhythm of John's eyes tracking over the lines of text on his book, or the minor twitches in his facial muscles as he tries not to react to his insipid TV dramas (so as not to disturb any 'thinking').
But only sometimes.
The desk is an unwise place to fall asleep. The surface is hard upon a face that might fall onto it, there is an irritating draught from one of the windows, the chair has a terrible habit of tipping with uneven weight distribution. John should have learned all this from experience. He is still asleep there.
He rouses at a curse and a thump from close by, and opens his eyes to see Sherlock apparently rifling through another box of papers. Apparently. He's really just pretending to so John doesn't throw something at him for waking him up deliberately.
"Y'alright?" John asks drowsily, still yet to remember that he is supposed to be searching too.
"Go to bed. Your snoring is distracting." It's not; it's rather soothing actually.
"I'm fine," John lies. He wipes the drool from the corner of his mouth and lifts a sheet of paper to squint at. The numbers must be swimming around merrily - John's focus is visibly doing the same.
"You are of no use to me. Useless. Go to bed. Sleep some. Find your uses again." Even Sherlock is talking exhausted nonsense now, but he won't sleep until he's finished this. His brain would just keep on doing it anyway, with or without his permission. John has no such issues - in fact, he's asleep again already. Still on the tippy chair. Sherlock sighs and gives the base an encouraging prod with his foot. Smiles to himself at the following creak and multiple resounding thuds and thumps. Doesn't look up.
It wasn't the mystery, it wasn't the psychosomatic limp, it wasn't the easygoing nature (if that had even pretended to exist in the first place - John isn't even on the spectrum of easygoing in reality), nor the satisfactory reactions to the stimulus Sherlock threw his way. It was his eyes. Not a soldier's eyes, nor a doctor's, but the haunted eyes of someone who knows they have fallen apart and that they have not the slightest idea if they are ever going to be anywhere near complete again. The secret, silent, scraping despair of loss - loss of oneself.
Initially Sherlock had wanted to fix John just because he could. That he could do it where no one else had managed. The fact that he was fixable would therefore prove that perhaps Sherlock was too. So yes, it had started selfishly. It had started long ago. It's become something else entirely now.
In the back of the taxi, John has started writing up the case in his head already. Sherlock can see his lips tremor, as though he is speaking the words almost aloud to himself to cement them in his memory. Sherlock really should start trying to teach him some basic (but better) methods of remembrance and recall. It would make their lives so much easier. More bearable for Sherlock anyway, he tells himself.
He doesn't though, he just watches.
John's fingers curl into a grip of air above his leg as he wishes he had a pen and paper to hand. Not a keyboard - that will never be natural to him. Sherlock has seen the tic many times; sometimes for a pen, for a weapon, for a cup of tea resting just out of reach. Sometimes for something more. He thought he had deleted those moments, but at least one memory remains… An instance of John's fingers reaching automatically across a space between them, reaching for him. The movement had been cut off abruptly, John drawing back.
Apparently Sherlock missed that one. He tries removing it again, because remembering that is doing nobody any favours. It doesn't work.
A horrifying thought suddenly materialises - inspired by a snippet of aborted affection, fuelled with his own occasionally crippling self-doubt and catalysed by the space, a gaping hole instantly opened in his knowledge. It must be filled. Now.
"Do you trust me, John?"
"You seriously have to ask?" John is looking out of the window. He doesn't even feel the enquiry is worth turning around for.
"I've done terrible things to you," Sherlock points out. Not today, that he knows of. Today's case was a simple one; solved with one visit, a handful of questions and a quick look over a tattoo parlour. John was at no risk at all. Sherlock wonders if he should have pretended one of them needed an inking, just to keep up his end of their bargain of chaos. He wonders if John would have done it.
"You've done wonderful things to me."
Ah, that would be why he's not turning. In his infinite emotional wisdom (not), John doesn't like eye contact when he opens up. He likes to keep at least a little defence raised.
"And you wonder why people talk." Now Sherlock's doing the other thing. The turn to humour to hide your feelings thing. He hates that thing. So he makes an effort to return to seriousness. "But when you weigh up the—"
"I weigh it up all the time, Sherlock. All the time." John sighs, a little cloud of breath that swirls damply in the interior of the taxi. It's not cold enough to steam, but Sherlock feels he can see it all the same. John sniffs casually before continuing, jarring the heavy silence with his faux-casual tic. "You've messed with my head a lot over the years, but the only reason there's a head to mess with is because you mess with it in the first place. It's kind of yours to mess with, if you know what I mean…"
"I do." He doesn't.
"Do you?"
"Err, no."
"Didn't think so." John reaches for Sherlock's hand. Completes the motion this time and gives it a squeeze. Doesn't let go.
John's shoulder always hurts. Constantly. Sherlock can't help but see it, no matter how well it is hidden. Sometimes, obviously, the pain is more severe, more biting than others. Sometimes it just gnaws relentlessly, but that's not much better. Sometimes it puts John to bed with opiate derivatives and the curtains closed. If he's caught at the wrong angle with the corner of an elbow on a cold damp evening, or with the bluntness of another shoulder in a doorway early in the morning when he's still sleep-stiff and crumpled, the sheen of pain in his eyes will become a bright glimmer, shining sharp in the light.
"S'fine," he'll say. "Don't worry."
But most of the time it can be forgotten, or at least pushed to one side for a while. Until it gets bruised or cold or overused. Sherlock is usually to blame for those.
"Sorry, John," he says.
John doesn't tell him not to worry when he actually apologises. Just smiles that unsmiling smile. Blinks slowly.
The Wall. Metaphorical, or perhaps not quite. Sherlock doesn't hit The Wall - rather it hits him; grips him with the rough surface of its bricks, every corner and groove catching at the exposed naked skin of him, scratching and scraping as he slides down in slow motion. He'd used to try and cling on, sometimes he still does; straining muscles and ripping fingernails. But usually now he just waits for the end, the bottom, the cold hard ground. Sometimes the wall goes on for miles and miles and days and lifetimes. Sometimes he just wakes up and finds himself already in a slumped, numb heap at the bottom of it.
Most of his time is spent perched atop The Wall, kicking his feet and looking around at the world. He can see so much (too much?) from there. Landscape far into the distance, unmarred by fog or focus. Right down to the scales of skin and individual hairs on the bug buzzing around in front of his eye (culex pipiens - might bite him, could squash it, not going to). And everything in between. Everything. Details screaming at him like recalcitrant children, caterwauling for a scrap pf his attention. Everything.
Sometimes he stands there, even higher, feels the breeze ruffle thrillingly through his hair, breathes it in deep and lets the essence of life expand and fill his chest. But it's risky - standing can lead to walking, which then unfailingly grows to leaning, dancing, swaying dangerously from side to side trying to keep his balance, looking down at the ground, so far far away and all the while knowing at some point he'll be down there, trying to claw his way back up.
One day he might just stop clawing.
"He won't be a pet," Mycroft had said after his first meeting John. "You can't just move him in and expect him to follow you around and do as he's told."
"He already does."
Careless shrug, raise left eyebrow, pout bottom lip - structured nonchalance. Mycroft had not been fooled. He had looked down, cold eyes sweeping over Sherlock's prone position, stretched along the length of the sofa. He sniffed meaningfully, reminding Sherlock that he hadn't actually washed or shaved for three days. A minor blip, easily mistaken for idleness at this stage, he hoped. It was an effort not to shrink away and hide a bit, turn away from that glaringly patronising smirk.
"He won't play your nursemaid, brother."
As usual, his arsehole of a sibling had got it all wrong. Well not all, just most. And then twisted it around and bastardised it, managing to get near enough to the truth anyway. Wanker. Sherlock stayed silent. His jaw clenched itself.
"Ah, I see." He probably did, the pompous twat. "You'll play his… Or try to."
"Fuck off, Mycroft."
"Really now, what would Mummy say if she saw you like this - this low, this petulantly angry with the world?"
Sherlock hadn't been angry. Not with the world, nor with his brother, not even with himself. Just sad. Sad enough that it was even sadder because he had nothing to actually be sad about. Except that he was sad. Which was a perfectly rubbish word, come to think of it. How could three simple common letters, one syllable, a fraction of a second, convey the chillingly molten turmoil weighing down his entire being…
Ugh, his blink hurt. Thinking was zapping his diminishing energy supply. His eyes were wet.
"She'd probably tell you to fuck off as well," John had suddenly mused aloud from his startling position, leant in the doorway.
Both Holmeses had jolted a little at that. John's ability to sneak up on people is still a mystery to this day. As is his ability to get rid of Mycroft with a simple twitch of his mouth and a minute jerk of his head.